The following essay is inspired by The New York Times book of collected essays featuring decorated veteran writers explaining their craft and inspirations. The collection is entitled Writer's on Writing and remains among my favorite books to this day. My project is written as if I were one of the essayists, explaining the source of my passion for writing and my advice to those reading.

I had a secret email address when I was twelve years old. It started as a fake email to make an Instagram account without my mom knowing, but it morphed into a catch-all for the pictures, documents, and terrible headcanons that didn’t quite make my (also secret) WattPad page. It’s an archeology dig of preteen cringiness perfectly preserved in Google Docs. 

I stayed up all night, fingers flying across the keyboard of the Chromebook I’d “borrowed” from my mom’s classroom. Stories filled me to the brim and spilled out across the bedsheets and my stuffed animal writer’s circle. I wrote my first movie, an equivalent of over three hundred pages, over a feverish two months on my iPod Notes App. I had a novel’s worth of fiction at age thirteen because I saw a post about NaNoWriMo and thought it would be easy. My mom remarked that she could tell when I was writing something new because I would line up scenes scribbled on notebook paper across my floor to keep them straight. Of course, none of these were all that original. In fact, all of them were definitely protected by copyright laws. But the year was 2011 and the hour was two in the morning; I did not fear God, let alone a lawyer. 

Fanfiction was better than real fiction to me. Sometimes, I still think it is. Though the foundation wasn’t always yours, writers could take awful stories to heights even they never imagined. It’s a whole world of people who deeply analyze their favorite works, often better than the original authors do. When your favorite things in the world directly line up with your writing, nothing feels like work. It’s catharsis. It’s community. It’s trail-blazing and exploratory and new.

I’ve spent my adult career as a writer chasing the almighty high of fanfiction. I still love writing, but once all of the pre-teen hormones died down and I began creating my original work, the hit didn’t feel the same. It isn’t tearing down a dam, it’s fixing a leaky faucet—a staring contest with a blinking cursor. Jobs, school, and bills call my attention away. When I finally have the chance to write my fingers gravitate toward the Netflix tab, instead. Why would I want to close out my long day of work with more of the same? 

Recovering the passion I once had is still a struggle. It’s still there, it’s just hard to be content with the normalness of it when you’ve had a taste of what it could be. Workshop classes helped to give me direction and structure to keep me writing, even if it didn’t feel as enthralling as my 2014 Harry Potter work-in-progress. Nevertheless, the deadlines pushed me through the staring contest to get words on the page. But, I graduate in just a few months. My last line of defense to keep me writing is about to leave me alone on the battlefield. It scares me that maybe I won’t ever write again because life just pulls me further and further away. 

Before I get into a big, new project, I like to open up that secret email. Maybe I’ll get crazy and redownload all of my old fanfiction apps. I’ll just read over everything, all of the unpublishable stories I poured my heart and soul into. Sometimes, they are utter garbage—crusted in One Direction references and a time long gone. Yet, sometimes there are nuggets of gold hidden in the flaky rust. I reread a story in which an injured character described his head as feeling like “overcooked oatmeal,” and I was a little surprised at the maturity of such a metaphor. Sometimes they are lines like that, other times they are carefully planned-out story arcs or confident dialogue that only comes from knowing your characters inside and out. It’s some inspiration to take with me into my newest piece, and also a little reassurance that even at your literary worst you still had some promise.

Rereading a library’s worth of copyright infringement also puts me back in that headspace. Back when I stayed up all night before school just to finish a piece and wishing my fingers could type as fast as my brain could spin. It’s revisiting old friends and sitting down to catch up on the lives I’d missed while I was out writing theses. Jacob Weir, the oatmeal-headed Marvel agent, sips his over-sugared coffee and recounts his transformation into a New York vigilante. George Weasley swirls his English Breakfast tea and talks for pages about the fourth Wizarding World War I’d forgotten I’d even written. Skander, a blonde Peter-Pan-esque child, would remind me of the island where she lives and the hundreds of maps I scribbled on the back of my notes until they were perfect. Though my newest projects don’t feature them in the slightest, catching up with old fictional friends lets me relive the comfort writing once gave me and encourages me to seek that and find it again in something new.

If there’s one thing fanfiction taught me overall, it’s that it is okay to plagiarize. Just a little. One of the first things I ever wrote was a direct rip-off of a scene from the overtly-made-in-2007 movie Underdog. I looked this movie up on Rotten Tomatoes and it scored a miserable, yet impressive 16 percent. That is like getting a zero on a true or false test, it takes some dedication! Despite its critical failures as a movie, there was a glimmer of an idea for an eight-year-old just learning to write—something she could take and fit into a larger story of her own making. References like this are scattered throughout my body of work. A penultimate monologue for a movie I wrote was a word-for-word transcription of YouTuber CharlieIsSoCoolLike talking to a pig-shaped marshmallow before eating it (funnily enough, also from 2007). Song lyrics would be hidden in dialogue. Easter eggs from hanging out with my friends would sneak their way into the premises. Inspiration is running everywhere, you just have to be ready to catch it. 

And fanfiction is inherently plagiarism. But, not as much as the mainstream media likes to say. Nothing is ever really new. Stories, plots, and archetypes are all reused over and over again. The Lion King is just an animal!AU fanfiction of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Fanfiction itself created its own language of recyclable tropes from “hotel room with only one bed” to “characters happen to meet in a coffee shop.” Most of the time, fanfiction isn’t just a continuation of a book after it has ended. Instead, it’s writers taking inspiration from a scene or a character or two and morphing their own original story around them. Writers create fluff scenes of characters just hanging out that the authors of source material don’t get the luxury of plot freedom to write. It’s plagiarism in the same way stealing a scene from Underdog is plagiarism, but what results is new and unique art. 

As a budding writer, fanfiction gave me something to work off of. Creating a world as dense as Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter felt like a massive undertaking. When my options are wide open, I shut down. With fanfiction, the complicated work was done for me. I didn’t have to worry about introducing completely new characters or creating huge backstories from thin air, the bones were already there. Instead, writing was a playground where I could come up with new offshoots and explore a landscape I’d only gotten a glimpse of in the author’s books. The writing world became a puzzle that I got to solve and expand on rather than a daunting, unchallenging, empty canvas.

Everything came so easily back then. There was no fight with the keyboard or a tug-of-war match to get me to start a piece. First and foremost, writing was for me. Not anyone else or to meet a deadline; just me and whatever I was excited about. These stories may have been posted online, but I didn’t write just to appease hordes of socially inept thirteen-year-olds. There was no self-critical eye to debate with over every word choice. Nor was there pressure to provide something “good” so everyone in my workshop wouldn’t think I was a bad writer. It was pure, child-like freedom incorruptible by the touch of critical reality. 

Of course, completely unchecked power led to some not-so-great writing choices. Combing through that email is taxing. There are several moments when I have to shut the laptop and physically shake the awkward prose and cringe-worthy jokes from my system. Especially when I remember that much of this was published online for the world to see at any given time (and will probably follow me to my digital grave). Yet, I wouldn’t trade those disastrous documents for anything. Even the most terrible fanfiction I wrote was still my beginning. They made me realize that writing was something I was good at and, better yet, something I loved. Everyone has to start somewhere, I just happened to start with Tumblr blogs and roleplaying Dreamworks characters. As much as I regret the fact my friends could dig all of this embarrassing history up with a few pointed keywords, they still made me the writer I am today. When passion sputters out, these barely comprehensible documents are a swift kick to get the motor turning again. 

I’m an overachiever at heart. Back in middle and high school, I spent every day fighting with myself and my ruthless inner critic to meet expectations outside of myself. I would cry when I raised a hand and got the answer wrong (Even going so far as to blame it on the death of my grandfather. Not once. Multiple times.). Under the lamplight of my bedroom tapping away on a keyboard was the only chance I had to be free of myself. The problem arose when that squeaky critic inserted itself into my safe space, whispering languidly that I didn’t have the talent or grit to be a writer. I am grateful that I pursued an academic writing education, but it complicated my relationship with the page even further. Suddenly, I wasn’t writing for myself but for my peers. Everything I typed had to be A+ material or nothing at all. It has taken going back to my lawless fanfiction roots to realize it shouldn’t have to be that way. The critic has an off-button, it’s just hard to find once it’s turned on.

Telling someone you used to write fanfiction feels like confessing to being an ex-felon. Most of us who have gone on to have writing careers burn any evidence of us “doing our time.” I can’t blame people that do; it can be hard to look at. The stories can easily be linked to the weird, awkward, annoying middle schooler we all try to forget yet haunts the family photo albums. But, as hard as it is, don’t shy away from its hellfire. Look. Open up that secret email, Tumblr blog, Archive of Our Own account, even the school notebooks you scribbled in the back of. Scroll through the stilted stories and overdramatic Rupi Kaur poems and just ask them how they’re doing. You don’t have to judge them as a magnum opus (trust me, they aren’t). Scoff at them, roll your eyes, convulse in agony at the language, but recognize them. Skander will fly over and tackle you with a hug like you never left, leading you out onto the island that you once owned. 

I’m not advocating for stealing another writer’s work. That would probably be enough of a confession to bring the copyright lawyers to my front steps with a printed copy of my Drarry one-shots. But, writing doesn’t have to be a loveless marriage. Fanfiction can be a way back home—a forgotten map to the secret playground that writing once was and can be again.